Mormonism - Christian or Cult?

Mormonism, known as
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (with
headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah -- a state that is now 70% Mormon),
was officially founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844). Smith
claimed to have had a personal visit from God the Father at the age of
15, who introduced him to Christ.1 Jesus
then supposedly told him not to join any church because they were all
wrong and all the Christian church's doctrines "were an abomination" (Joseph
Smith -- History 19, Pearl of Great Price). After Smith's murder in
1844, Brigham Young took the cult to Utah, where there is now a major
University named after him, and the number of Mormons exceed one
million. The Mormon Church currently claims about 11 million baptized
members worldwide (5.2 million U.S., ranking it 5th among the largest 25
U.S. denominations), up from about 2.5 million in 1970. 1970. Over the last
decade, nearly 300,000 individuals over the age of eight have joined the
Mormon Church every year.
Membership is expected to grow to over 23 million over the next two
decades. It is growing fastest in Latin America and Asia. Official
publications include Church News, a weekly 16-page newspaper, and
the Ensign, a monthly magazine.

The Mormon Church collects at least $6 billion a year from its members,
and generates at least another $5 billion in sales from its various
business enterprises; total church assets exceed $30 billion. (At least
100 companies are controlled by the Mormon Church, and some estimate its
total annual revenues in excess of $20 billion! The church also owns
18 radio stations in the U.S.)
Part of the Church's income goes to operate an elaborate internal
welfare system so its members avoid any governmental assistance. The
Mormon Church also has a 58,000-plus missionary force working in more
than 160 nations in 102 languages. The Church's Provo, Utah, 26-acre
Missionary Training Center receives 500 new missionaries a week into its
3-9 week intensive missionary training program. (All boys, once they
turn 19, are expected to dedicate two years of their lives to missionary
service.) Fielding missionaries is a $500 million per year effort and
currently reaps more than 300,000 new converts each year. Nevertheless,
only about 46% of Mormons attend a church meeting at least once a month.
(The clean-cut image that Mormons have attained has been a major factor
in the attractiveness of the Mormon Church to outsiders. They are
forbidden to drink coffee, tea, and alcoholic beverages, and use tobacco
products.)

The Mormon church (LDS) is organized
so that one prophet leads the church. Beneath the prophet in authority
is the Council of the Twelve Apostles. A third group of men are called
the First and Second Councils of the Seventy. All of these men together
are called the General Authorities. Local churches are called Wards
or Stake Centersand
meet for worship in what the Mormons call "meetinghouses." The Temples are not
for worship, but are used for ceremonies for the living and the dead.
Less than ten percent of all LDS members are allowed to enter these
structures.

As of year-end 2002, there were 114 operating temples of Mormondom
worldwide, with another 14 under construction or approved (albeit less
elaborate than the 50 temples in existence at the end of 1997).
(Approximately 65,000 members must be in an immediate area to qualify
for a temple.) Temples are required for Mormon marriages and for proxy
baptisms of ancestors. Most people assume Mormon temples are places of
worship. This is not true. Only secret, occult rituals for the living
and the dead are performed there, and Mormons think they must perform
them to have eternal life. It is tragic that over eleven million Mormons
think they need secret handshakes, oaths, incantations, and rituals,
which originated in occultic Scottish Rite Freemasonry, in order to be
with God in heaven! (In the final years of Joseph Smith Jr.'s life, he
became a "worshipful master" in the Masonic Lodge.)

Many today are under the false impression that Mormonism is merely
another Christian denomination, when in actuality, Mormon beliefs are
not only unbiblical, but anti-Christian. Below are the
highlights of what Mormons believe concerning their source of authority,
the Trinity, God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, sin, salvation, and heaven
and hell:

1. Source of Authority. Mormonism teaches that
the canon of Scripture was not closed when the Bible was completed. They
have three sources in addition to the Bible, all of which they believe
contain God's revelations -- the Book of Mormon 2 (changed in more than 4,000 places since
1830), Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great
Price. However, Mormons follow the teachings of these three books
even when they contradict the Bible. For example, Mormonism teaches that
the Bible is the Word of God "as far as it is translated correctly."
Then whenever a Mormon belief contradicts Scripture, the Mormons say
that particular part of Scripture is translated incorrectly, and that
the correct translation is in one of the Mormon scriptures (The
Maze of Mormonism, p. 131). Thereby, the Bible is rejected as the
infallible Word of God. [e.g. "The Bible is considered usable, but
suspect due to its many errors and missing parts" (Articles of Faith No.
8, Ensign, January 1989, pp. 25, 27).

2. Trinity. Mormonism teaches
polytheism(versus monotheism taught in the
Bible), believing that the universe is inhabited by many gods who
produce spirit children. Joseph Smith declared, "I will preach on the
plurality of Gods. I have always declared God to be a distinct
personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the
Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and
these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods" (Teachings
of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 370). Mormon Apostle Bruce R.
McConkie spoke about the Godhead in this way, "Plurality of Gods: Three
separate personages: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, comprise the Godhead.
As each of these persons is a God, it is evident, from this standpoint
alone, that a plurality of Gods exists. To us, speaking in the proper
finite sense, these three are the only Gods we worship. But in addition
there is an infinite number of holy personages, drawn from worlds
without number, who have passed on to exaltation and are thus gods" (Mormon
Doctrine, pp. 576-577).
3. God. In Mormon theology, the god of our planet is
believed to have once been a man on another planet, who through
self-effort and the help of his own father-god, was appointed by a
counsel of gods in the heavens to his high position as the god of planet
Earth, and now has a physical, resurrected, glorified body. Mormonism
teaches that through the atonement of Christ and by their good deeds and
"holy" living, men can one day become gods, and with their multiplicity
of "goddess wives," populate their own planets. (This is what the
celestial marriage and the Mormon temple vows are all about.) Mormon
theology, therefore, humanizes God and deifies man.3

4. Christ. Mormonism acknowledges the divinity of Christ,
but as noted above, Mormon doctrine on what constitutes divinity falls
seriously short of the Biblical standard. Mormonism teaches that Jesus,
Lucifer, and all the demons, as well as all mankind, are actually all
spirit brothers and sisters, born in the spirit world as spirit babies
to our man-god Heavenly Father and his goddess wives. Mormon leaders
have consistently taught that God the Father ("Adam-god") had sexual
relations on earth with Mary (his own spirit daughter), to produce the
physical body of Jesus. Early Mormon apostles also asserted that Christ
was a polygamist, and that His wives included Mary and Martha (the
sisters of Lazarus) and Mary Magdalene.4

5. Holy Spirit. In Mormonism, a
distinction is drawn between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit. As LDS
Apostle Marion G. Romney stated: "The Holy Ghost is a person, a spirit,
the third member of the Godhead" (Ensign, May 1977, pp. 43-44).
The sixth LDS prophet, Joseph F. Smith, explains that the Holy Spirit is
not a person but rather an impersonal force: "You may call it the Spirit
of God, you may call it the influence of God's intelligence, you may
call it the substance of his power; no matter what it is called, it is
the spirit of intelligence that permeates the universe" (Mormon
Doctrine, McConkie, pp. 752-753).

6. Sin. In Mormon theology, it is not quite
clear how the first humans, Adam and Eve, came to live on this earth and
received bodies, but somehow they did and began the process of human
procreation, whereby bodies are produced for their spirit children. But
at the very beginning of the process of human generation, sin entered
necessarily. The earthly bodies of Adam and Eve were intended to be
immortal tabernacles for their spirits, "but it was necessary for them
to possess through mortality and be redeemed through the sacrifice made
by Jesus Christ that the fullness of life might come." Therefore, they
disobeyed God's commands. Since the fall of man was necessary, it became
necessary for men to disobey God in order to do His will. Adam's fall,
thereby, was a fall "upward."5
Concerning the transmission of sin to Adam's posterity, Mormons take a
negative position -- they believe that men will be punished for their
own sins, and not for Adam's transgression. Having rejected the doctrine
of the imputation of the guilt of sin, Latter-Day Saints likewise
repudiate the transmission of inherent corruption or original sin.

7. Salvation. Mormon theology teaches that the
atonement of Christ was essential to our salvation and eternal life with
God, but that it is not sufficient. Christ's
shed blood on the cross provides for universal resurrection of
all people, but does not pay for personal sins; according to Mormonism,
only Christ's blood shed in the Garden of Gethsemane atones for personal
sin. Besides faith in Christ, complete and permanent repentance of all
sin as well as many good works are required.6
Mormonism also teaches that one must be baptized in water to be saved (baptismal
regeneration), and that salvation will also be available in the next
world for those "missing-out" in this one. Therefore, Mormons avidly
pursue genealogy and practice baptism for the dead.7
8. Heaven and Hell. Mormonism teaches that there are three
degrees of glory: Celestial (for good Mormons able to cease sinning in
this lifetime -- see endnote #6below),
Terrestrial (for good people who do not comply with all the teachings of
Mormonism), and Telestial (for those who have lived unclean earthly
lives). (See also Mormon Doctrines, p. 348.) Mormonism teaches
that there is a hell, but only for the "sons of perdition," a very small
number of souls that cannot be redeemed. According to Mormonism, then,
the vast majority of mankind will be "saved," though it should be
obvious that no one will make it to the Celestial Kingdom. [Blacks used
to be totally out of the equation: "Black people are black because of
their misdeeds in the pre-existence" (Three Degrees of Glory, LDS
Apostle Melvin J. Ballard, p. 21); "The Negro is an unfortunate man. He
has been given a black skin. But that is nothing compared with that
greater handicap. He is not permitted to receive the priesthood and the
ordinances of the temple, necessary to prepare men and women to enter
into and enjoy a fullness of glory in the Celestial Kingdom" (Elder
George E. Richards). In 1978, however, the Mormon Church announced that
God had lifted his curse from the African race.]

9. Temple Rituals. A typical temple ceremony
would take place as follows: "The ritual began in a small cubicle where
we had to strip completely. We then put on 'the shield,' a poncho with a
hole for the head, but open on the sides (similar to a hospital gown).
We went through a series of 'washings and anointings,' as various parts
of our bodies were touched by elderly temple workers who mumbled
appropriate incantations over them. Our Mormon underwear, 'the
garments,' are said to have powers to protect us from 'the evil one.' It
had occult markings, which were so 'sacred' that we were instructed to
burn them when the garments wore out. The endowment ceremony mocked all
doctrines held to by Biblical Christianity, and Christian pastors were
portrayed as servants of Satan. We had to swear many blood oaths,
promising we would forfeit our lives if we weren't faithful, or if we
revealed any of the secrets revealed to us in the temple ceremonies. We
were made to pretend by grotesque gestures to cut our throats, chests,
and abdomens, indicating how we would lose our lives. We were never told
who would kill us! The inference was, and history testifies to, that it
would be the Mormon priesthood." (Testimony of a former Mormon.) [Note:
The blood oaths and portrayal of Christian pastors were removed in April
of 1990, despite the fact that the ordinance was purported to have been
given originally by a revelation and was never to be changed.]

10. More from the Mouths of Joseph
Smith and Brigham Young.

Joseph Smith

"God made Aaron to be the
mouthpiece for the children of Israel, and He will make me to be God
to you in His stead, and the elders to be mouth for me; and if you
don't like it, you must lump it" (Documentary History of the
Church, vol. 6, pp 319-320).

"I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man
that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the
days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me.
Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no
man ever did such a work as I" (D.H C., vol. 6, p. 408-409).

"The whole Earth shall bear me witness that I, like the towering
rock in the midst of the ocean, which has withstood the mighty
surges of the warring waves for centuries, am impregnable ... I
combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with
illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the gordian knot
of powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities, with
truth -- diamond truth; and God is my right hand man." (D.H.C., Vol.
6, p. 78).

"And I prophesy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the
United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in
Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers that in a
few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted and
there will not be so much as a potsherd left, ..." (D.H C., vol. 5,
p. 394). [This prophecy was made in May of 1843, and the United
States government has not been overthrown and wasted.]

"Here then is eternal life -- to know the only wise and true God;
and you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and to be kings
and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you..." (Teachings
of the Prophet, Joseph Smith, p. 346).

"In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the
Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the
world and people it" (Ibid., p. 349).

"The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us
is to seek after our dead" [Our God of the Bible has forbidden us to
have anything to do with the dead (Deut. 18:10,11).

Brigham Young

"I have never yet preached a
sertuon and sent it out to the children of men, that they may not
call Scripture. Let me have the privilege of correcting a sermon,
and it is as good a scripture" (Journa1 of Discourses, vol.
13, p. 95; also see vol. 13, p. 264).

"I say, rather than the apostates should flourish here, I will
unsheath my Bowie knife, and conquer or die. [Great commotion in the
congregation, and a simultaneous burst of feeling, assenting to the
declaration.] Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will
be put on the line ... If you say it is right, raise your hands [All
hands up], let us call upon the Lord to assist us in this, and every
good work." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 83)

"I could refer you to plenty of instances where men have been
righteously slain, in order to atone for their sins ... This is
loving our neighbor as ourselves, if he needs help, help him, and if
he wants salvation and it is necessary to spill his blood on the
earth in order that he may be saved, spill it." (Journal of
Discourses, vol. 4, p. 220). [Many were killed under what is
called the "Blood Atonement Doctrine" Leaving Mormonism was one of
the sins that the blood of Jesus could not atone for, and a person's
own blood must be shed by Mormon priests as an atonement for sin.]

"I intend to meet them on their own grounds. ... and if any
miserable scoundrel comes here, cut their throats." [And they
obeyed; a wagon train of innocent men, women, and children were
massacred at Mountain Meadows under the orders of Brigham Young.
They were passing through Utah, and Brigham thought they were from
Illinois where Joseph Smith had been killed. Many more were
"atoned."]

"Gold and silver grow, and so does every other kind of metal, the
same as the hair upon my head or the wheat in the field; ..." (JOD.,
vol. 1, p. 219).

"Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that
shines of an evening, called the Moon? ... So it is with regard to
the inhabitants of the Sun. Do you not think it is inhabited? I
rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No
Question of it; it was not made in vain." (Journal of Discourses,
vol. 1, p. 219).

"Do you think we shall ever be admitted as a State into the Union
without denying the principal of polygamy? If we are not admitted
until then, we shall never be admitted." (Journal of Discourses,
vol. 11, p. 269). [The Edmunds Act was passed in 1882 forbidding
polygamy in the territory, and only then was Utah allowed to enter
the Union. At that point the LDS church officially gave up polygamy.
Another false prophecy from the Mormon prophet!]

"I think these preliminaries will satisfy me, and I feel prepared to
take my text. It is the words of Jesus Christ, but where they are in
the Bible I cannot tell you now, for I have not taken pains to look
at them. I have had so much to do, that I have not read the Bible
for many years. I used to read and study it, but did not understand
the spirit and meaning of it ..." (1854 Conference discourse,
October 8). [Brigham Young obviously did not understand the Bible,
and neither do any of the other Mormon prophets!]

In
recent years, Mormon leaders, including the church's modern-day
"Prophet," Gordon B. Hinckley, have sought to align the LDS' public
teachings and practices with those of politically correct, global
ecumenicism. But it is only
until recently that Mormons wanted to be called "Christians," preferring
not to be included with Christian denominations, which Joseph Smith Jr.
said were, "all wrong ... all their creeds were an abomination in His
sight, and that those professors (Christians) were all corrupt" (Pearl
of Great Price, Joseph Smith, 2:18-19); Mormons have preferred to
be called "saints." However, in the recent years, the LDS church has
spent millions of dollars in an intense "PR" campaign aimed at moving
the Mormon church into the mainstream of Christianity. The political and
economic benefits of Mormons being included in the mainstream of
Christianity are obvious. Further, for Mormons to be accepted as
traditional Christians would greatly aid in proselytizing the members of
Christian denominations into the LDS church. This is why the LDS church
is trying so hard to present itself as Christian and is trying to
overcome the stigma of being a cult (9/16/96, FBIS, "Are
Mormons Christians," by Cooper P. Abrams III). Moreover, Mormons let it be
known in early-2001 that they no longer wanted to be referred to as "the
Mormon Church," "the Latter-day Saints Church," or by "LDS Church." If
the name must be shortened, "the Church of Jesus Christ," or "the
Church" is acceptable, they said (3/19/01, USN&WR).

Endnotes

1The Bible lists six identifying marks
of false prophets, any one of which is sufficient for identification:
(1) through signs and wonders they lead astray after false gods (Dt.
13:1-4); (2) their prophecies don't come to pass (Dt. 18:20-22); (3)
they contradict God's Word (Isa. 8:20); (4) they bear bad fruit (Mt.
7:18-20); (5) men speak well of them (Lk. 6:26); and (6) they deny that
Jesus, the one and only Christ, has come once and for all in the flesh
(1 Jn. 4:3), thereby denying His sufficiency in all matters of life and
godliness (2 Pe. 1:3). Most cults are founded upon false prophecies,
which, if pointed out, offer an effective way to open blind eyes and
rescue cultists. Mormonism boasts of its prophets -- but they have all
been false. In the course of 18 years, founding prophet Joseph Smith
made 64 specific prophecies. Only six of them were fulfilled -- fewer
than 10 percent. Many of his proclamations dealt with the future of his
church. For example, in August of 1831 he stated that God had told him,
"The faithful among you shall be preserved and rejoice together in the
land of Missouri." In September of 1832, he stated that the city of
Independence would become the "New Jerusalem ... even the place of the
temple, which temple shall be reared in this generation." Six years
later the Mormons were driven out of Independence. No temple was built
there. Eventually they were driven from Missouri and settled in Utah.

In 1833, Smith prophesied that the United States
would suffer unparalleled multiple disasters ("pestilence, hail, famine,
and earthquake") which would sweep the wicked (non-Mormons) off the
land, leaving Mormons safe in their Zion haven in Missouri. Instead,
they fled to Utah. Among Smith's many other false prophecies was the
declaration in 1835 that Christ would return within 56 years and many
living then would "not taste of death till Christ comes" (History
of the Church [Vol. 2], p. 182; [Vol. 5], p. 336). Smith's
successor, Brigham Young, prophesied that the Civil War would not free
the slaves.

2The Book of Mormon,
purported by Joseph Smith Jr. to be "inspired by God," is the most
famous of specifically Mormon "scriptures." Smith concocted the
preposterous yarn that an angel named Moroni (pronounced ma-roe-nee)
appeared to him in 1827 and told him of some golden plates hidden in a
hillside near Palmyra, New York. From these plates, Smith supposedly
translated the Book of Mormon. [Published in 1830, this was
to become the first of many scriptures for the Mormon Church. By this
time, Smith had also officially organized the LDS Church and was gaining
a following. Over the next ten years, the church headquarters would move
to Kirtland, Ohio; Independence, Missouri, and Far West, Missouri.
Finally it would find a resting place in Nauvoo, Illinois.] In
actuality, the Book of Mormon is a fraud, having been
plagiarized from the Bible, from Shakespeare, from the pope's
Essays on Man, from the Westminster Confession of Faith, and from
other leading authors of the last few hundred years prior to Smith's
death. Despite its plagiarisms, the Book of Mormon
contradicts the Bible in hundreds of places (9/95, Maranatha
Baptist Watchman).

3Joseph Smith explained, "I am going to tell you how God came
to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all
eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you
may see. He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the father of
us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did" (LDS
History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 305). "The Father has promised us
that through our faithfulness we shall be blessed with the fullness of
his kingdom. In other words we will have the privilege of becoming like
him. To become like him we must have all the powers of godhood; thus a
man and his wife when glorified will have spirit children who eventually
will go on an earth like this one we are on and pass through the same
kind of experiences, being subject to mortal conditions, and if
faithful, then they also will receive the fullness of exaltation and
partake of the same blessings. There is no end to this development; it
will go on forever. We will become gods and have jurisdiction over the
world, and the world will be peopled by our own offspring. We will have
an endless eternity for this" (Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 2, p.
48).

4Brigham Young stated, "The birth of the Saviour was as
natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural
action. He partook of flesh and blood, was begotten of his Father, as we
were of our father" (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 8, p. 115).
Mormon Apostle McConkie explained, "And Christ was born into the world
as a literal Son this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal,
real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father.
He was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of
events (Mormon Doctrine, p. 742). Jesus, according to Milton
Hunter of the LDS First Council of the Seventy, is the brother of
Lucifer: "The appointment of Jesus to be the Savior of the world was
contested by one of the other sons of God. He was called Lucifer, son of
the morning. Haughty, ambitious, and covetous of power and glory, this
spirit-brother of Jesus desperately tried to become the Savior of
mankind" (The Gospel Through the Ages, p. 15).

5On June 8, 1873, speaking from the Salt Lake City
Tabernacle, Brigham Young said, "The Devil told the truth ... I do not
blame Mother Eve. I would not have had her miss eating the forbidden
fruit for anything. ..." Another Mormon president declared, "The fall of
man came as a blessing in disguise... We can hardly look upon anything
resulting in such benefits [i.e., godhood] as a sin." Incredibly,
Mormonism is based upon the belief that Satan's central lie is the
gospel truth!

7Mormons believe that everyone who lives and dies on this
earth goes to a place called the Spirit Prison, except faithful Mormons,
who go to Paradise. Mormon Spirit Missionaries go down from Paradise to
the Spirit Prison and teach the Gospel of Joseph Smith to the lost
Christians and others there. Those who accept Mormonism must remain in
prison until a worthy Mormon performs certain essential rituals, called
"Ordinances," for them in one of the Mormon Temples. Then they are
released from Spirit Prison to join the Mormons in Paradise. Since these
rituals or Ordinances require a physical body to be washed, anointed,
baptized, etc., they can only be performed by a living person in the
place and manner prescribed by Deity, acting under Universal (Mormon)
cosmic laws.